PROJECTS

Our services converge to build healthy communities that are rich in historic character, offer experiences for everyone, and contribute to a sustainable ecological footprint. These attributes combine to create and preserve places that reflect and value local history, social-equity, culture, climate and ecological priorities. We provide a variety of services aimed at helping clients realize projects and programs that contribute to community capital while also shaping and sharing each client’s unique storyline.

• Outreach

• Community Engagement

• Social Capital Building & Fund Raising

• Interpreting science, history, climate change & green building

• Research

We use the power of storytelling to help clients understand their current trajectory, envision the story they’d like to shape, and create the projects and plans necessary to realize that vision. Our team has over 25 years of experience working with NGOs, public and private sector clients in the arenas of community initiatives and engagement, conservation, green building, preservation, and educational. Listening is a powerful tool in our stash, along with good strategies and a lot of passion. Our projects share a dedication to community engagement, public service, ecology and preserving character and history of a place, while incorporating the better aspects of technology and modernity.

We start by gaining an understanding of what determines success for our clients. Our goal is to help each client achieve their goals while boosting community health, environmental sustainability and high-performance buildings. We work collaboratively for the best results.

Selected Projects

STORM

Site Story worked with the Puget Sound’s STORM (Stormwater Outreach Regional Municipalities) Steering Committee in 2020. The volunteer coalition spent the past decade working to reduce stormwater pollution and implement the Clean Water Act in our region. For this project we explored options for reliable long-term funding for a permanent STORM Manager to better support and expand the coalition's efforts. The scope of work included researching other environmental organization’s structural models to inform the development of STORM’s model. Site Story also provided recommendations for the best avenues to build the support necessary to secure both public funding and outlined how private foundation funding might best bridge the time until the public funding is secured.

The STORM Coalition is also the founder of the Puget Sound Starts Here Campaign, recognized as one of the most effective clean water campaigns in the country. STORM comprises 83 jurisdictions including counties and local municipalities.

To learn more visit  https://www.pugetsoundstartshere.org/

Seattle Greenbridges (a partnership of Clean Lake Union, The Nature Conservancy and Salmon-Safe) Seattle, WA)

Site Story is currently leading outreach and fund development for 12 green stormwater infrastructure projects at 6 bridges to improve water quality and salmon habitat along the lake Washington Ship Canal. Contaminated stormwater from Seattle’s Aurora Bridge and the other 5 bridges on the canal has been discharged untreated for over 80 years, impacting migrating salmon and resident orcas that depend on those salmon as a primary food source. The project is the first in the country addressing polluted stormwater off public bridges to be treated on private land.

Ballard Open Space Plan for Northwest

Working with Groundswell Northwest, Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods, Seattle Parks, SDOT and SPU, Site Story lead a yearlong citizen’s engagement effort to identify priority sites for green infrastructure, urban ecology improvements, protection of open space and the creation of new parks in Ballard.  The plan compliments the Puget Sound Regional Open Space Strategy (ROSS).

Garden Hotline and Natural Soils Building Program, Seattle (a program of Seattle Tilth Alliance)

Since 2013 Site Story has provided public outreach for the Garden Hotline. Funded by Seattle Public Utilities, the Garden Hotline educators have been providing information and guidance at no cost to home gardeners and landscape professionals.Their goal is to educate the public on ways to reduce waste, conserve water and other natural resources, and minimize the use of chemicals in gardening

King County Green Tools

Site Story was an on-call consultant to King County GreenTools working on policy development, permit incentives and their green building ordinance. Our team led their Urban Rural Watershed Tours, participated in their Green Building Ordinance, and provided green building trainings for their Sustainable Cities and 4 Climate Change (K4C) programs. In addition, we developed green building case studies for their web site and education toolkit and provided technical services for the Counties Historic Preservation Plan.

King County River Safety Program

The 2015 River Safety focus groups were conducted to inform King County’s River Safety Campaign which is being run by their Parks and Recreation Division and will be launched in the spring of 2016.  The River Safety campaign will promote safe river recreation practices with a target demographic of males ages 15 – 25 who have been identified as the most vulnerable at-risk population in King Count give data from the medical examiner’s office over the past ten years and is consistent with National and state wide statistics of river accidents and drowning incidents. 

On-Call Consulting Stewardship Partners

Site Story served as an on-call consultant for Stewardship Partners from 2009 – 2016. Our work included strategic planning, support of the Salmon-Safe program, outreach for the 12,000 Rain Garden initiative; planning for the annual Green Infrastructure Summit as well as fund raising and sponsorship for their annual Feast on the Farm. 

PAST:forward  Centennial Trail Interpretive Plan

PASTforward is a multi-media, multi-tool interpretive exhibit that depicts the history of the Centennial Trail from 1928 - 1959.  The interpretive program is located along 29 miles of trail from Snohomish to the Nakashima Farm just north of Bryant, WA. The project was developed in collaboration with Snohomish County Department of Economic Development assisted by other county departments including Parks and Recreation, Transportation and the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau. The program reveals little known stories of local industries, women and minorities along the former rail corridor and amplifies the dark history of U.S, Japanese internment during WWII. SKL Architects was the design partner for the project.

Salmon-Safe

Site Story led the expansion of Salmon-Safe’s urban program in Washington. We served as primary strategist for outreach in Puget Sound since 2009. Our firm was instrumental in raising over $1 million dollars of Salmon-Safe’s operating budget since 2015. Other services include policy development for Salmon-Safe incentives in urban cities; producing tours, workshops and events; support in designing new certification standards, large scale contractor assessments and training; Salmon Safe workshops for green building professionals.